Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday May 09, 2011 @04:02PM
from the tell-a-story-in-140-emoticons-or-fewer dept.

asa writes "The Knight Foundation and Mozilla are running a series of news innovation challenges. The goal: get the world's smartest hackers thinking about how news organizations can harness the open web. The current challenge is all about comment threads. This seems like the perfect question to pose to Slashdotters: how would you foster more dynamic spaces for online news discussion? How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls? All ideas, technical, practical or impractical are welcome. What technologies (federation, atomic commenting, moderation, algorithms) would you employ? What are the immutable social dynamics? Knight and Mozilla will work with the best challenge entrants to deploy the solutions in newsrooms at Al Jazeera English, the BBC, boston.com, The Guardian, and Zeit Online. Submissions are open until May 22nd."

People can say whatever they want, moderation points stamp out trolls and assign relative values to posts (not always the best system, but not bad), etc. Of course, for it to work, you have to assemble a pretty smart/knowledgeable/literate bunch of people (that's the real trick). And you would still have to avoid kdawson stories, of course. Not a perfect system by a longshot, but one of the best.

Most of the systems I've seen on news sites for commenting have ranged from "suck ass" to "MAJORLY suck ass." Moderators are either too tough (nothing controversial gets through) of too lenient (leading to comment threads loaded with spam). Just go look at the "Wired" story comment sections sometime. Half of them don't work at all, the other half are loaded with spam, and some of their stories don't seem to let you comment at all. And that's from a *tech* magazine.

the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.

Expressing a conservative opinion is difficult Slashdot as well. But I agree that the system here is far better than anywhere else, like Reddit - where karma whoring is rampant and good discussion is often subdued under "funny" comments. Don't even get me started on the lame memes generated over there.

Try looking at the comments in the "At the AV Club" section of The Onion sometime. Even though that section is supposed to be the serious part of the Onion, every single poster thinks they're trying out for the regular Onion writing staff. It's like a competition to see who can make the most ironic/detached/funny/irreverent statements in 5 seconds.

Is it possible that's because of the conservatives on Slashdot? Or maybe it's because of the overall quality of what passes for "conservative thought" circa 2011 and the cognitive dissonance such opinion requires.

And THIS attitude is precisely why expression of conservative thought seems/is difficult here.

I'm Libertarian. My views are typically modded either "insightful" if they tend to be "left" (D) or "troll" if they are "right" (R) side of things. My thoughts are generally well thought out, and often just don't fit the whole (D) good (R) bad (or visa versa) Drone Thought.

Just a few days ago, on talking about "wars" and casualties and such, some guy posted his anti GWB death stats in Iraq. Completely ignoring the fact that since "hostilities" have ended, the death count has slowing been dwindling. But when

What you described with the left is exactly what happens with the right. In fact, it tends to happen to EVERYONE. If you believe in something to be true, you will argue that it is true, even if proven wrong.

This is what human beings do and while politicians may not be greatest humanity has to offer, they are still human beings and still susceptible to the various common human traits.

Expressing a dissenting opinion is acceptable here if you're not being a combatative jerk at the same time.

For example:Not acceptable: Obama is a liberal puppet intent on destroying America.

Acceptable: I feel Obama's decision to remove tax breaks for oil corporations will weaken the fragile economic recovery as the increase in the effective tax rate is passed down in increased gas prices to businesses and the general population.

Both of them will be disagreed with of course, but only the first one will get modded into oblivion. The difference is that the first is just throwing out perjorative language, which stifles the listener's ability to examine the substance of the post. This implies that the writer has no regard for communication and is not interested in an exchange of ideas. The second one avoids perjoratives, and provides substance so that those who reply will be invited to respond to the substance, rather responding to an insult.

I find both liberal and conservatives making the mistake of attacking the listener instead of trying to persuade the listener. Obviously Slashdot has a liberal bent, so if a conservative poster wants to dissent, they should be taking extra care with their post, not less. I always read at -1, and I have not noticed a single cogent conservative post being modded away. I have seen occasions where they have received negative moderations, but in all such cases, the positive moderation ultimately left those posts at +5.

I would welcome links to some examples of well-thought out conservative posts that were moderated away. Then we can look and see for ourselves if they were negatively moderated for their content, or for the manner in which they are presented.

And just try expressing an anti capitalist or critical of capitalism/libertarian/market opinion on slashdot. Slashdot is a bastion of free marketeers, libertarians and virulent 'anti left'.

This is what I find interesting about Slashdot; people on either side of the aisle claim that it holds the opposite of their own bias. I find that that generally means someone has struck a radical middle ground, standing for something which both supposedly opposing sides are jointly against. In Slashdot's case that's mostly simple libertarianism, but now and then I see an opinion not so easily categorized, which are the real gems here.

Now, Slashdot is not one person with a single coherent opinion, so it's hard to say what "our" collective opinion is. But that there is enough going on that both liberals and conservatives find the discourse challenging their opinions means that there's some real intelligent dialogue happening here, and that's what I still like about this place.

Some conservative opinions do find an open audience on Slashdot. Now, if we had another evolution/creationism thread, you would see very few pro-creationism comments modded up. But in a lot of political threads, any comment on how awesome Ron Paul is will get modded up. Then again, Ron Paul isn't "conservative", he's libertarian. Libertarian views certainly get mod points.

Julian Assange isn't a US citizen. He can break US law all day long and it's A-OK. Now, if he broke INTERNATIONAL LAW or the laws of his country, you might have something there. But whatever law he broke would have to be covered by one of those inconvenient extradition treaties...

I've seen that claim before. It's clear that/. is US-spawned and -hosted, but I'm not quite as convinced that the actual majority of people on here are American. Some proper statistics might be interesting.

the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.

Does nobody else see the irony of a comment like this being moderated to +4?

The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.

the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.

Does nobody else see the irony of a comment like this being moderated to +4?

The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.

You make a seemingly poignant and clever remark. However, his comment is not obscure, minority, or controversial... his comment is mainstream, rational, and well accepted, particularly among the SlashDot crowd.

What he refers to is daring, perhaps "crackpot" opinions that go against the grain of the PC ethos of the internet community. A lot of crackpots are annoying attention-starved irrational, overly emotional, etc, and they often get the down-votes they deserve. But we all know and admire the few epic heros who changed the world with their unpopular opinions because they ended up being a step ahead of the world in insight... We should make sure that the internet does not make it easier to squelch these people, but instead allows them to blossom.

He's talking about people like the guy who makes rational attempts to critique or debunk global warming science, the guy who enters a discussion forum on a San Francisco newspaper and tries to argue that it's wrong for gay couples to raise children, the Saudi who tries to argue for equal rights for women in his country, that guy who thinks Jar Jar was a worthy attempt at levity in the Star Wars mythos.

These guys, if they make their cases with reasonable doses of civility, credible knowledge, and rationality, should still be heard, even if their opinions are loathed by the majority. These people make us sharper as a society. They are out of the box thinkers. And some of them could be right.

Yet, in a pure crowd-sourced voting system, the unpopular opinions will always get squelched unless they manage to provoke a flame war before they are forgotten.

The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.

No, that's a false dilemma. "Is not perfect" != "Nothing works"

I know, I was just playin'.

In point of fact, the issue is much subtler and appears almost paradoxical: There is a very large contingent on Slashdot that remains convinced that they are operating in a fundamentally unjust system in which valid opinions are discounted due only to their unpopularity. It's amusing to see that there are enough people operating with this misapprehension that accusations of unjust moderation[*] and 'group-think' are consistently moderated upward.

Quite the opposite seems to be true: if you dare to say anything about Apple that ranges from neutral to good (for example, I dare you post a comment where you're critical of hardware support in Linux and mention that you elected to go with Apple instead, because in your line of work, it lets you get said work done way more easily), you'll be instantly labelled an Apple fanboi and would probably be modded as such if the site so permitted. Just head to the most recent story about Apple being evil for not releasing latest WebKit LGPL code and browse through the comments.

I think that problem is unavoidable in a peer moderation system. It would be somewhat mitigated with "editor" moderation (i.e. centralized moderation), but that has a raft of other problems.

Of the news comment sites I frequent, none have comment threading (at most, they limit indenting to one level), and none have effective moderation. Despite its flaws, the/. system is light years ahead of them, especially if you start counting from 1999 or whenever it was.

Oh, and don't get me started on some of the registration requirements for commenting on some news sites. I swear, some of them want everything from my grandmother's street address to my the length of my dick (in centimeters). So if I want to comment, I have to call up grandma and ask for both.

Moderation points are also used BY trolls to silence people (or opinions) they don't like. For example, saying that you bought an iPad and didn't like it almost-always results in -2 hits to that post. I'm surprised you've never noticed that?

I think Slashdot's system would be vastly improved if the -1 points were expunged, so this kind of behavior could not happen. Also I think it would be better if everyone was assigned a default 0. Trolls would remain stu

If the default were 0, then all comments would be invisible at first. A whole bunch of people would need to be willing to read comments at 0 and mod up everyone that isn't trolling. That's too much work.

So do I, but I've definitely noticed that my comments get vastly more attention posting at +2 or +1 than they do when I post as a +0 AC, both by moderators and other posters. Personally, I think you should be forced to browse at -1 whenever you have mod points, but that would probably just lead to a sharp decrease in the number of people willing to moderate.

There's one major flaw I've noticed in the/. system: groupthink and herd mentality. Anything that perfectly fits a certain mentality will get upmodded, most things that disagree with it get downmodded. Thus, people who disagree with that thinking (or even just don't care about it) have a disincentive to post, and the site attracts people fanatical about that viewpoint, perpetuating the problem.

For/., the "mentality" is "MAFIAA evil, government evil and incompetent, big corporations bad (except google 'cuz they're good guys)", but it could just as easily be anything. If, say, a firearms news site adopted the/. system, it would probably end up with a strong "Kalashnikov gas-operated rotating-bolt system is perfect, Stoner direct-impingement system is evil" bias (or vice versa). Or an indie gaming site might end up with a "no sequels, artsy plot-heavy faux-retro side-scrollers only, and if it becomes popular YOU SOLD OUT" mentality.

PS: Don't deny that it happens. I've seen anti-MAFIAA comments get +5 Insightful in articles about space travel. And I've never seen anything even vaguely pro-copyright get above a 2.

Groupthink: A derogative term used to disparage a widly-held belief or set of beliefs with which the speaker does not agree.

I've seen highly-rated counter examples for all of the examples of groupthink you cite. Not so many for copyright as it stands today. I would suggest that's because there's not much positive to say. You can get a good rating for "creator's rights are important!" but adding "...for the creator's great-grandchildren!" might lose you some points.

The term groupthink was introduced (by Janis, IIRC) to describe the phenomenon that groups sometimes settle on a more polarized consensus than one would expect after querying each individual before they went into the group. That effect doesn't necessarily happen, but it has been observed in many instances. The Wikipedia page lists a few canonical examples.

I think your "definition" of it is itself derogative, but I agree that groupthink is not very prevalent here. For one, it requires that the group is high

And I've never seen anything even vaguely pro-copyright get above a 2.

Right here, in at least two [slashdot.org] stories [slashdot.org] there are many counters to your claim. GPL is a form of copyright and people demand that be protected and be upheld.

I think what you are complaining about is that everyone on Slashdot is upset with "The Mickey Mouse Act" and is disgusted that lobbyists determine how long copyright stands so now it's an unreasonable length of time. And yeah, anyone defending that deserves to be modded down. But you're not going to find anybody other than massive studios defending that because why would an artist care that their work is copyrighted past their death? Hell, I would demand it be public domain so that more people could enjoy my work.

You can post positions counter to "group think" but you have to pose them intelligently and try to achieve a neutral point of view when you do it. An example might be proposing copyright reform down to twenty years but enforcing it even more rigorously to ensure that the artist truly gets royalties for those twenty years. Swearing at people and calling them thieves only illustrates you don't understand the nature of copyright infringement nor how the biggest most powerful players have the public by the balls and all politicians in their pockets.

I assure you on copyright and patents, I have often posted comments asking people what they thought a responsible length of time was or asking them how biotech firms should recoup their losses on searching for/developing drugs if they should not be able to patent them.

I think what you are complaining about is that everyone on Slashdot is upset with "The Mickey Mouse Act" and is disgusted that lobbyists determine how long copyright stands so now it's an unreasonable length of time. And yeah, anyone defending that deserves to be modded down. But you're not going to find anybody other than massive studios defending that because why would an artist care that their work is copyrighted past their death? Hell, I would demand it be public domain so that more people could enjoy my work.

Mark Twain used to complain about the limited term of copyright - and considered copyright expiration a form of theft.

I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children.

Recognizing groupthink as a problem is one thing, fixing it is another. Even the legal system (laws and court system, all the way to the Supreme Court) are all just low-pass filters that make society's judgments register with society's long-term values. They reduce kneejerk reactions, but they're still ultimately based on nothing but collective values.

There's one major flaw I've noticed in the/. system: groupthink and herd mentality. Anything that perfectly fits a certain mentality will get upmodded, most things that disagree with it get downmodded. Thus, people who disagree with that thinking (or even just don't care about it) have a disincentive to post, and the site attracts people fanatical about that viewpoint, perpetuating the problem.

I agree with you about Slashdot with one exception: a distinguishing quality of the Slashdot metamind is that it's at least subconsciously aware of its own biases. Witness, for example, the fact that your post -- ostensibly critical of Slashdot's readership and moderators -- was modded up to +5. It's precisely that honest admission that the system isn't perfect, and that yes, Slashdot has its systemic biases, that keeps me satisfied with the moderation system as it stands.

We enjoy the slashdot system because we don't mind rehashing the same discussions every time a new story comes up, but it's more than a little redundant.

I would detach comment threads from the stories and tag them; old comment threads could get automatically attached to a new story that's similarly tagged, and then moderated down if it's no longer applicable or up if there's nothing new to say; presumably, some sort of pruning or metamoderation to cut it down to only the best posts. In theory, wise posts c

Slashdot is one of the best I've seen. If you allow anyone to be a moderator, and have unlimited points past 5, you get all sorts of people gaming the system... And the hivemind. Besides those systems were no doubt influenced by Slashdot

I've thought of a superior system to Digg.com, where instead of everyone getting upvote/downvote priviledges on a global pool of points, you could have factional voting. An example is Democrats don't like what Republicans post: So if there are more Dems than Reps, the R

Why should we assume that there's any value at all to having a "dynamic" discussion/commenting section on general news sites?

Part of the charm of Slashdot is the unique quality of the users (at least those with UIDs lower than about 1750000). The stories don't matter as much as the "dynamic" discussions. And the worst behavior of jerks (like me) is kept to a minimum by the modding system. It works because the stories are not the main draw of the site.

On a general news site, where people go for information, there's really little value in any "dynamic" discussion except to let us know the level of stupidity among the readers. If you don't believe me, go read the comments section of your local newspaper. Don't spend too much time doing that though, or you may become afraid to ever leave your house.

if the comments sections were actually decent, you could read the newspaper and discuss the news with others who also happened to be reading the newspaper and were interested in the same story you are.

And why does said discussion have to happen on the same website as the news story? Since newspaper sites are in the business of getting people to look at them, they cannot be counted on to create an effective moderation system, any more than you can trust the discussion system at Fox News or Huffington Post.

Rather than moderation scores, I'd rather see and "I agree" mod of various types (let's say "Insightful", "Informative", or "Agreed"). But if you disagree, you need to include a reason why. I imagine you'd get a lot of gibberish just to bypass the text input requirement or likely a lot of ("cuz u suck" comments), but it would be a start.

As far as UI tweaks, adding Facebook-like autocompletes for links would be nice.

Group citations too...so when you disagree and add a citation (a link or reference), you ca

It used to be better though. The lower scored comments at the head of a thread would appear after the higher scored ones. Now the order does not change as you scroll down the page. The ones that were posted sooner appear nearer to the top. I used to moderate by reading a bit, then changing the order to most recent first. Then new ideas I would moderate appropriately. This also helped to see comments that had been modded down unfairly, I could still see them and mod them back up.

But keep in mind that most of these things (ESPECIALLY a & b) will basically get you banned or your post completely deleted on most forums. And Slashdot does seem to be getting better. I criticized Linux just today and amazingly didn't get modded down into oblivion immediately (un

I have found that whether or not a comment on a subject gets modded down or up on Slashdot depends on two things. The first is the article it follows and the wording of the summary. I can't define it, but when I read a summary on Slashdot that bears on one of the hot button topics (Apple products, Linux, religion, etc) I can usually tell if which direction the discussion will lean. The second, depending on which side of the issue has mod points and is on Slashdot. I have seen comments on one thread get modd

The Apple thing has gotten a lot better in recent years (as Steve Jobs looks less and less to the world like an idealistic hippie and more and more like a ruthless supervillian petting a cat). There was a time when saying anything even vaguely pro-MS or anti-Apple would get you modded to "-30 retarded" in about a millisecond.

FLOSS and Linux are still pretty bad, though. but I think even they've improved a little recently (maybe that's just my subjective experience).

Everyone has a right to speak, even idiots. If you don't like what they have to say, then just add them to your ignore list. Trolls/idiots polluting forums is preferable to censorship like happens on some boards (Sony erasing negative posts about the hacking).

Other ideas:- no point system or post tally. People don't deserve to get points just because they post a lot. People don't deserve to get points at all, for the mere act of expressing an opinion.- threading is essential, so the replies are tied to the original post- keep it simple. Plain text. Uses less bandwidth.

Trolls may be a problem. Personnally, I think that special interests groups present a more formidable challenge.

Once they target a thread on an organized attack, either by themselves or through a PR agency too happy to cater to their needs, there is little that a few, by definition disorganized, moderators can do. The tone heats up in minutes, you can see that any of the seasoned intelligent commentators stay away from such threads. Sometimes, they back off from the site entirely.

Slashdot has a pretty impressive record, and the administrators surely have valuable experience in this regard. Even then, from time to time, you see the sturdy moderating system collapse under an persistent assault. This is always a disheartening experience for me, to see bullies have their... I mean our, cake.

In these times, I always wonder what we could do to prevent this from taking place. I do think that an awful lot is at stake: public interest, to say it in two words.

I would argue basic markup is critical. If you want a good discussion people need the ability to link to supporting documents. It also helps a lot to put things in lists, emphasize certain words or sentences, and set quotes apart from the reply. Simple markup makes all of that possible.

And let's not forget support for Unicode!

I do see your point in limiting the forum to text. However, there have been many occasions where I would have found it hand

We're assuming that the average person is capable of performing that kind of filtering.

Old net newsgroups used to be a free-for-all, and look how that ended up.

Some moderation is still necessary. I think it's more a matter of, what system of moderation is the least painful? Slashdot comment moderation, for better or worse, seems to do an ok job. I think the biggest problem is that it needs a better set of options to choose from. Maybe add a few more items such as 'misinformed', or 'ad hominem', and be a

True, but isn't debate inherent when allowing people to comment on news items? Slashdot in my eyes has never been about solving other peoples problems. Slashdot is about venting opinions on the latest tech news.

Slashdot isn't a forum where you'd ask for help about your favorite Linux distro, for instance. You might have an excellent question but it might only be slightly relevant to the news item being discussed, and there only is a tight window of t

Many usenet readers provided an astonishing number of features that we have lost in the move to web forums. Maybe something was gained, but much was also lost.

Killfiles were useful to stamp out trolls. These days there could be a feature similar to adblock subscriptions that would block known trolls across all forums.

The reader features themselves on the better clients were MILES more advanced than what is done today in web browsers, even with AJAX. A web browser is a good tool, but it isn't the right tool for everything. It doesn't seem like the right tool for large scale discussion forums, although it can "suffice" for them - it just isn't as good as a dedicated application. Also with a dedicated app, you get your choice of which one to use. With a web forum, you get whatever the forum software gives you to. It takes choice away from the user and places it with the site.

There are still discussions on technical topics, and trolls are relatively tame in those newsgroups. Usenet nodes almost universally use spam filters now, which helps a lot. Usenet is not dead and there is no reason to refer to it in the past tense.

Yep. A modern client should have collapsible threading, notifications (via various methods-- SMS, email, facebook, IM, controlled by user per site/domain). It shouldn't be tied into Facebook just because FB has a half-way competent implementation; it should be an open standard that does *not* require a single, real, trackable ID. But it *should* involve a computational cost to generate accounts, to mitigate spam. And killfiles, reputation services (think adblock lists) should all be in the spec (so you

Where slashdot fails:a) Anonymous Cowards are seldom read, and seldom moderated up.b) the Javascript filtering makes it impossible to search.c) Mandatory login to get rid of the 50 comment limit.

Where Twitter and Discq.us have fared better:1. Universal login, so I don't have to keep creating accounts on 10,000 damned sites, blogs, and everything with a comment field.2. Disqus - "Likes" somewhat like a karma system.3. Twitter - Followers, eg follow those that contribute, so by this nature it "whitelists" whe

Open discussions can either be primarily informative with an "anything goes from anyone" approach, or primarily educational in that some attempt is made to improve the signal-to-noise ratio by dealing with the trolls and spammers. In either case, any given forum will have to initially take a perspective to be either informational with the exercise left to the reader for picking out the wheat from the chaff; or if their perspective is educational and hence doing some guiding of the discussion for relevance

I think a facebook twitter combo would be a pretty good solution. On a given newsfeed you should be able to see the comments of those who you are following. You would obtain those friends through a one sided relationship like twitter (i.e. they don't need to grant you permission) and you could also see the posts of those who belong to specific groups (i.e. I hate Republicans or I hate Democrats) -> that way, you could find more individuals to friend. You could perhaps also have an option to see posts

How come after year, I mean it's been more than a decade for me here for sure (if I remember right), how come after all these years this site hasn't figured out the simple things about comment threads?

COMMENT THREADS!

Look at this fiasco [slashdot.org] - that's a comment about somebody leaving yet another comment in that thread, and quite a number of comments there are the same, redundant stuff, and why?

but a story on/. about a better design for comments threads - now that's irony.

So to the question:

How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls?

- I will say: forget trolls. Get the basics working and don't screw it up first of all - let the people SEE what the thread is first of all. Don't hide comments in threads by default.

As to trolls, etc: have simple "like/don't like" and have thresholds, nothing else should really be done. You can't get rid of trolls, and look what/. is doing and don't do it.

Do NOT force people to log out and post as ACs if they rich some weird 'threshold' (number of comments they can leave under their user name per 24 hours) - what good does that do? People register other accounts or they post as ACs. This is NOT good for discussions.

Do you have a discussion forum or is it a chat room (IRC like)? I think that's the first and only really important question. Do you want to keep history of all the comments or not?

Here is what/. is really doing that's pretty stupid: not showing the entire history of comments for non-AC users. As stories age, they disappear, contexts disappear. What's the point of having any history on line if it's uselessly unsearchable? There is no index.

There is no way really to link to an older discussion that maybe of some value.

Also for various political reasons on this site, comments are often moderated high up, and then after a while they are moderated down [slashdot.org] only so that people wouldn't be noticing them, even if they are totally pertinent to discussion, no trolling, no flame, those are just unpopular views and a coordinated moderation attack pushes them down where nobody is reading.

Don't allow political dissent to be drowned on your site by shills and just by those who don't like what you have to say. Have the "like/don't lie" feature - that's useful. All this other nonsense is just counterproductive if you don't want to run a site, that's dominated by one single mindset.

I've always thought that allowing users to moderate comments is a good idea, but it seems that a lot of people either don't know how, or think it's a waste of time. If users were exposed to the merits of moderating comments and the good that can come from it, it could be a good venue for filtering flaming and trolling. However, by that same token, users could simply utilize other users to downvote/rate other comments because of a disagreement, argument, or whatever. It'd be nice to find a way to prevent thi

The goal: get the world's smartest hackers thinking about how news organizations can harness the open web. The current challenge is all about comment threads.

So what does "harness the open web" mean? To the news organizations it probably means "make money". Comments are largely irrelevant for that. If news organizations want to attract readers (assuming that translates to "make money") they need to do two things - 1) report news that people feel is interesting or relevant. and 2) provide intelligent analysis of the news (not discussion forums). They could use a forum to generate ideas for further investigation/reporting/answering tough questions that the media doesn't do too often. Of course by the time they ask questions and do some further investigation the story will be a bit old. And this also doesn't work with stories about tornadoes and celebrities.

get the world's smartest hackers thinking about how news organizations can harness the open web.

Or how about we don't! The new organizations can do there own dirty work. If someone could harness the power of the web, in a manor that helps the media, this would have value, it would potentially make someone very rich. Media has its own agenda, it isn't in our favour (as in the public) the worlds best hackers should be doing what they have always done.

News is about trolling for eyeballs. The most sensational, shocking, scandalous and salacious stories attract the most eyeballs which means more advertising revenue. If it bleeds it leads. How can trolls be stamped out when the news media culture is rooted in a form of trolling?

Oh, wait, it always was about the eyeballs. I remember when you could attract an audience with factual reporting and insightful analysis, based on investigation and jornalistic reporting. Now it's mostly sensationalism and opinion made up like news.

Why not take it a level further and allow commenting not just on news stories, but on any desired url?

A comment-system could even be integrated in the browser. Imagine just opening a webpage, clicking the "comments" button, and seeing a bunch of moderated comments (perhaps even in slashdot style). Now that would be awesome!

what I'd like is a comment system where the comments are shared across sites.

If a popular news item comes up, I might be interested in the editorial slant at theregister, but perhaps I first saw it on digg, and there's a tech angle at slashdot that's interesting too. It's the same *story* and I want different news outlets to do their own research, conclusions, and editorializing, but it would be cool if the comments were shared so that if someone posted a witty +5 remark on slashdot, people on digg would s

You have to build positive karma to earn downmod points. Still limit how much they can be employed but require positive contributions to earn the ability to downmod. Too often we see sockpuppet accounts downmod unpopular opinions or mark them as troll simply because they disagree. There's no disincentive if these sockpuppet accounts accrue modpoints simply by sitting around.

How about everyone getting to choose their own way of tagging and displaying every comment and user with an optional added numeric modifier for every tag?

Some days I might want to see (or hide) for example what the most popular "+3 Constipated"(and up) comments from anyone modded at least "+2 United-Fruit-apologist" by self described "Anarcho-Marshmellowians". At other times I might choose something less ridiculous, involving tags like "Conservative", "Insightful" and the like.

One could also choose to view comments in the style of reddit or slashdot (except maybe everyone would always have points, so the slashdot style would be filtered by mostly most popular moderators calculated in some way.)

What's needed in most news comment forums is human moderators consistently applying well-defined local cultural rules about what's acceptable.When those rules are made explicit and then enforced, they can become a self-reinforcing part of the culture. Users get educated in the process, and educate the newcomers, requiring less professional community management.

You cannot replace this kernel of human etiquette with a technological solution and expect to get better "discussions" than, say, here on Slashdot.

So first find the sites that do rules+human moderation well enough already to host the level of civility and discussion you hope for, and distill out the minimum rules and moderator involvement needed to get there. Then add the tech.

Ultimately the problem here is that just because everyone *can* speak... doesn't mean everyone who does speak has something worthwhile to add. In addition - anonymity makes it easy to be a jackass as it removes any connection to real-life consequences.

So my undoubtedly unpopular answer is to require verified ID for all posters*. Further require that all posters use their real names as contained in their verified IDs. Even with that you'll still get some amount of trolling/flaming, but it will require muc

you ignore the fact that anonymity allows one to express valid positions that aren't popular and/or outright illicit. this is crucial to a discussion being productive. the only thing your platform creates is cliquish conformity. That's hardly discussion. just because there's a 'consequence' for someone posting something, doesn't mean that the subject is incorrect. all the 'consequences' do is protect the feelings of the majority against the opinions of the minority and/or factual, objective truth. this isn

The San Jose Mercury News used to have an awful problem with comment threads erupting into flame wars (as much as I enjoyed getting into the middle of them). That was in the time of anonymous commenting. Nowadays they use the Facebook plugin, so your comment appears beside your profile pic and your name on FB. It has become very civil all of a sudden. You have the option of checking a box to post the comment to your profile, something I never select.

I did an experiment on Digg and Slashdot a few years back. I posted two extremely similar comments using two different accounts. Then I modded one comment up, and one down.

Keep in mind that there was essentially no difference between these posts other than their initial out-of-the-gate moderations. On both sites, the one I modded down got modded down further. And the one I modded up got modded up further.

While the experiment was quick and informal (I'd love to see others expanding the effort...) it

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